I think they absolutely should hang out together–maybe it’s kind of ’70s feminist “the personal is political” of me, but I really think all human activity is inherently political, and ought to admit to being such. That said, I think that it’s important that poetry–art in general–not be a form of sloganeering. The point of art is to reflect and magnify complexity; to cause us to see additional alternatives and points of view.

5.) Is it bad to laugh at propaganda? Good? Insensitive and bourgeois? Intellectual and proactive?

The problem is that propaganda is, once you’re out of the context from which its power derives, often quite funny. At least, on a discourse level: for all the pretty colors and happy children, what Maoist propaganda says is still: “You might as well like this system, because you have no other choice.” It’s not a message you can ever actually succeed in getting across, is it?